Pastor’s Blog October 2017

Published on October 4, 2017

An Everyday Church with an Everyday Mission to make Everyday Disciples.

As I shared on Sunday morning this is the kind of church that I want to be part of. The purpose of the series of sermons on 1 Peter that I began on Sunday is to explore what it might mean to be such a church and what such a church might look like.

On Sunday we saw that the context of Peter’s letter is to churches that are both Elect and Exiles. I suggested that this is now our context and that this means that 1 Peter has real relevance for us. We are Elect, God’s people chosen for God’s purposes. Yet we are also Exiles, those who find themselves marginalised and seemingly without much influence in our world. What kind of people should we be? How then should we live?

To be Everyday Church is not to be at a church meeting or activity every day. It is to recognise that we don’t cease being church when we are not together. We are the church scattered, sent out by the Holy Spirit to live out our faith in the context of our everyday lives.

It is in the context of ordinary life that we are called to be part of God’s everyday mission. Mission should not be seen as an occasional, special activity of the church but rather the on-going calling of all God’s people.

This means that as Everyday Disciples we are to see ourselves as missionaries to our families, neighbours, workplaces and communities. Everyday Discipleship is according to Timmis and Chester, in their book Everyday Church, “ordinary life lived with gospel intentionality.”